SkyDrive, Joby and Marubeni to participate in Smart Mobility Expo project at Expo 2025 Osaka, Japan

Sky­Drive, a lead­ing Japan­ese eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er head­quar­tered in Toy­ota City, Japan, has been select­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the ‘Smart Mobil­i­ty Expo’ project at Expo 2025 Osa­ka, Kan­sai, Japan.

Sky­Drive has been a mem­ber of the Round­table estab­lished by the Osa­ka Pre­fec­tur­al Gov­ern­ment in Novem­ber 2020 since its incep­tion, work­ing with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers and involved in activ­i­ties to pro­mote under­stand­ing and social accep­tance among local res­i­dents.

In 2021, the com­pa­ny signed a part­ner­ship agree­ment with Osa­ka Pre­fec­ture and Osa­ka City to fur­ther increase the recog­ni­tion of this project.

When the Japan Asso­ci­a­tion for the 2025 World Expo­si­tion announced the call for appli­ca­tions for the oper­a­tors of AAM in the Smart Mobil­i­ty Expo in Decem­ber 2022, Sky­Drive applied and was select­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2023. Details includ­ing routes, fre­quen­cy of flights, num­ber of air­craft in oper­a­tion, and flight fare will be dis­cussed and decid­ed with the Asso­ci­a­tion and relat­ed par­ties.

“Sky­Drive has been aim­ing to fly SD-05 to give a sense of a future with AAM and I would like to express my sin­cere grat­i­tude to all stake­hold­ers and employ­ees who have sup­port­ed Sky­Drive,” said Tomo­hi­ro Fukuza­wa, the Founder and CEO of Sky­Drive.

“We are once again aware of the expec­ta­tions for AAM at the Expo site and excit­ed about the chal­lenges ahead. We will con­tin­ue to steadi­ly pro­mote busi­ness and air­craft devel­op­ment so that peo­ple around the world can wit­ness and expe­ri­ence the arrival of advanced air mobil­i­ty. We look for­ward to the future norm in a decade or two, where every­one can use the sky for dai­ly trans­porta­tion.”

Mean­while, ANA Hold­ings and Joby Avi­a­tion have also been select­ed for the 2025 World Expo­si­tion to oper­ate demon­stra­tion flights and for flight con­nec­tions between the Expo venue and at least one oth­er loca­tion in Osa­ka.

The com­pa­nies have been work­ing togeth­er for over a year on estab­lish­ing air taxi oper­a­tions in Japan, col­lab­o­rat­ing on all aspects of this rev­o­lu­tion­ary form of trans­porta­tion, includ­ing infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment, pilot train­ing, flight oper­a­tions, pub­lic accep­tance and the reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments to oper­ate.

In Octo­ber 2022, Joby became the first for­eign air taxi man­u­fac­tur­er to for­mal­ly apply for its air­craft design to be cer­ti­fied for use in Japan. The demon­stra­tion flights will form part of the Expo’s Smart Mobil­i­ty sec­tion and intro­duce this new form of trans­porta­tion to the 28 mil­lion guests expect­ed to vis­it the Expo between April and Octo­ber 2025.

Koji Shi­ba­ta, CEO of ANA Hold­ings, said: “The Expo 2025, Osa­ka, Kan­sai, Japan pro­vides ANA with a glob­al stage to demon­strate what our part­ner­ship togeth­er with Joby can deliv­er. As Japan’s largest air­line with 70 years of expe­ri­ence deliv­er­ing safe and reli­able flights to cus­tomers, being select­ed for this pres­ti­gious oppor­tu­ni­ty under­scores our ded­i­ca­tion to bring­ing togeth­er inno­va­tion and oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence to show­case this rev­o­lu­tion­ary new ser­vice.”

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO, Joby, added: “This is a tru­ly unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce our air­craft to the world and we’re proud to be work­ing along­side ANAHD to demon­strate what this tech­nol­o­gy can deliv­er. The World Expo has long been the home of rad­i­cal trans­porta­tion inno­va­tion and we’re pleased to be play­ing a lead­ing role in con­tin­u­ing that trend.”

Final­ly, Marubeni will be fly­ing Ver­ti­cal Aero­space’s VX4 air­craft at the Expo, and will uti­lize its know-how cul­ti­vat­ed through its net­work in the avi­a­tion indus­try and diver­si­fied busi­ness activ­i­ties to cre­ate a soci­ety where air trav­el is more acces­si­ble and con­ve­nient.